Issuing a new identity to a participant

A new identity can be issued to a participant using either the API, the command line, or by using ID cards in the Hyperledger Composer Playground. Once a new identity has been issued, the identity can then be used by the participant to interact with the business network in the context of that participant.

When using Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Composer issues new identities by using the Hyperledger Fabric certificate authority (CA) to register new enrollment certificates. The Hyperledger Fabric certificate authority generates an enrollment secret that can be given to the participant, who can then use the enrollment secret to request their enrollment certificate and private keys from the Hyperledger Fabric certificate authority.

Before you start

Before you follow these steps, you must have added a participant to a participant registry. The issuer of a new identity (whether using command line or using the Javascript APIs below) must itself have 'issuer' authority and as appropriate, ACLs that permit them to issue the identity (to be associated with the participant) in Hyperledger Composer.

The procedure below shows an example using the following model of a participant from the Digital Property sample Business Network Definition: digitalproperty-network